About Getting Married

I’ve finally reached the age when question like “When are you getting married?” is not at all inappropriate anymore. Seriously, once my boss asked me this question and when I giggled as the response, he add “What? Why? You’re an adult, not a kid anymore, it’s a normal question to ask.” Christ, he was right. I am an adult and I have to realize that more of that kinda question is coming my way. He was not entirely right, though, because it’s quite a personal matter to discuss and some people might still find it inappropriate to ask, regardless of their being adults. But, we, I especially, have to accept the fact that we live in Indonesia, where the society thinks it’s okay to snoop around other people’s business. People will not think it’s weird to ask people they only slightly know when they’re getting married, what are their religions, when they’re going to have kids, etc. So we might as well prepare for it, right?

Anyway that’s the least annoying marriage-related question there is. Some people can get so inconsiderate to ask the following question (it’s more like a statement, really): “Why don’t you get married? Aren’t you afraid to fall into free sex trap? Don’t you want to have kids?” Whoa whoa, shut the front door, people. So, are you saying that the main reason you get married is just to get laid and to procreate? So you rush into marriage just to avoid free sex? I feel sorry for that kind of people. I really do feel sorry, for they think so lowly about marriage. Let’s talk about the sex first and no, I won’t talk from the “moral” perspective since it’s highly subjective matter and it’s not really my place to talk about it. But let’s talk about it rationally, using our (supposedly) evolved brains. If you rush into marriage just to get laid or to avoid free sex, what if the sex turns out to be not as good as you though it would be? What if you’re unhappy with your spouse? What if you find out later that you and your spouse have nothing in common, except the shared belief to get married just to avoid free sex? I mean come on, you’re really dishonoring the concept of marriage if you just see it as a way to “legalize” you to have sex.

Second, about the breeding purpose. Why so single-mindedly thinking that everyone who gets married wants to have children? What if they don’t want to have children? Or what if they want but can’t? If your sole purpose to get married is merely to produce offspring, it will crush you (and your marriage) if you can’t have one. Most of the time married couple use their kids as the glue that keep the marriage intact, that doesn’t seem like a happy marriage for me.

But hey, what do I know, right? I’m just an unmarried 20-something who just observing a rising phenomenon about marriage. But if you ask me, I see marriage as a union between two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their life together, without anything to do with what the society perceived to be “right”. And when I do it I’d do it because I want to, because I’ve decided that I want to wake up to him every single morning, not just because the sex or the need to have offspring (hell, I’m not even sure if I want to have one-but that’s another story). So, if you ask me when will I get married, the answer is; it’s still a long way to go 🙂